Gender Stereotypes In American Culture

Women are second class citizens and should walk behind a man, is this thought in essence that many cultures portray correct? The current culture is portraying this in covert ways through stereotyping. Stereotype a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Today United States culture has moved from the old defined roles between both genders. However, there are gender roles, stereotypes, myths, and/or controls in society that still exist today. These niches has divided the country, because of the polarizing views on the key topics of equality. Additionally, the male dominance has made exacerbated the situation where there is competition between both genders. The result of this has made
American society is heavily male dominate, even though there has been many changes in this way of thinking the society still place limitations on women’s role in leaderships, types of jobs they perform and how much they get paid. There are some things that has limitations based on physical ability, which is fare, however, they are un-necessarily extremely difficult for women to try if one sees that women is completely equal to men in ability. It is scientifically proven that the male body is built differently than the female’s body. Male’s body is able to produce larger and stronger muscles then female. If one would base job types and duties on the ability of using strength could see that they would prefer males in a job type over women, one because of qualities they are looking for, and the male gender would have the preponderance of the ability pool. If one would truly hold to preponderance in ability pool, and say I believe that I would advertise more to the males than females would not be wrong. Where it becomes wrong would be to say I am only going to hire males because males has this attribute that women does not have, then there is a problem. This thought would totally discount Females that are physically able and willing to do the job and that is “No Bueno”. Now if one would look at social policies that set standards one would have to look at the underlying message that is spoken in
American and European culture has set different roles between male and females. These differences has limited these two groups to certain jobs and positions in society. Scantlebury states, “Gender as a continuum is social and relational, rather than categorical. In other words, gender only exists as a comparative quality (if people are “less masculine” than others, they are also “more feminine” than those same others, even if their biological sex is the same)” (Scantlebury, 2009). It once was thought that male careers were policeman, fireman, and doctors and female careers were nurse, teacher, and care givers. These were and are still to a point the social norms in the society today. However, it is proven that women and men’s are growing and are as capable in reversed roles while keeping their sexual and most importantly their personal identity. If one would look at the data of mixing gender in these careers, one would see that significant advancement has been made because of the changes in paradigms of how we look at careers. Subconsciously, these roles are still being reinforced in schools. “Teachers reward girls for being compliant, quiet, and helpful, which are stereotypic feminized behaviors. These behaviors in girls are also associated with White culture. Thus African American girls, whose socialization encourages assertive behavior, are often at odds with teachers who deem practices